Newspaper Spotlight From The National Library of the Netherlands

It has a great deal of experience in making digital newspapers available online. Already, thousands of its own digitised newspapers are available via its Historical Newspapers (Historische Kranten) portal.

Today, we’re taking a look at the content that will be contributed to the Europeana Newspapers Project by the National Library of the Netherlands. For a closer look at each paper, simply click on the image and a gallery will appear.

[ezcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end id=”” class=”multicolumn” style=””]This newspaper from 1896 reports on the first Olympic Games since the year 393. The article states that the organisers did not want it to be an old-fashioned event, so they added gymnastics, swimming, tennis, cricket, cycling, shooting and fencing to the program. There was no one competing on behalf of the Netherlands, but luckily this did not stop the publishers from writing a two page article on the Olympic Games.[/ezcol_1half_end]

[ezcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end id=”” class=”multicolumn” style=””]This article is from the oldest newspaper on the newspaper website of the KB. The original lies in the Royal Library of Sweden and they gave permission for the KB to digitise the newspapers for publication. The KB wanted to digitise the paper because it includes an article about one of the most important events in the (Dutch) Reformed Church, namely the Synod of Dordrecht. At this meeting, it was also decided to translate the bible into Dutch for the first time.[/ezcol_1half_end]

[ezcol_1half id=”” class=”” style=””][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end id=”” class=”multicolumn” style=””]This article reports the death of president Lincoln on April 14th, 1865. The newspaper was only published in the Netherlands some two weeks later, on April 30th, 1865. The article presents a number of telegrams about the event and the death of not only president Lincoln, but also that of Frederic Seward, the son of Secretary of State William Seward. He was attacked in his house at the same time as Lincoln, by Lewis Powell. However, it is nice to note that Frederic Seward survived and lived to be 84.[/ezcol_1half_end]